A story, the point of which is an idea, like Clarke's THE STAR, is one which you rarely want to re-read. Once you know the idea, there is not an emotional pleasure in re-reading.

A story which is about a character or characters changing or struggling I am more likely to want to re-read so I can experience the emotions again.

Hmmm...ideas don't usually raise emotions the way characters' changes do and emotion is what I seek to re-experience when I already know the ending.

[This message has been edited by arriki (edited January 29, 2007).]

"The Star" is an idea story. I don't mind reading it again, maybe because I figured it out before I got to the end the first time, and still enjoyed it anyway. But I'll agree that it's not the same as character emotions (although you are supposed to feel the angst of the narrator).

On the other hand, most stories that I would consider "character" stories don't seem to have much happening besides the character's internal struggles. Usually, I think those characters are just really stupid (not always, this isn't a blanket condemnation, just a tendency on my part).

Most stories (that I've encountered) that are primarily character stories do indeed seem rather passive to me. They are all about the character's angst. I can't stand them, if you want to know the truth. (Again, this is not a blanket condemnation. I'm combining what I believe is an actual trend in that type of story with my own preferences to explain why most don't appeal to me.)

There's often confusion on the difference between Character stories and character-driven stories. Obviously character stories are character-driven, too; but generally I find that people who say they write character-driven stories are writing Event stories. The events are character-driven rather than plot-driven. Of course, you'd be hard pressed to find a story that doesn't involve elements of both, as well as having elements of milieu and idea, as Survivor says.

Let's take Ender's Game as an example. Ender's Game is not about Ender's need to change, and certainly not about his recognition that he needs to change (even though he changes). It's driven to a very large extent by his character, by his intelligence, by his need to excel, to come out on top, combined with the paradoxical desire to be good and do no harm to anyone. But it's also driven by the setting in which he finds himself. Most of the setting is beyond his control: the buggers, the battle school officers, the older kids. What his character determines is the way he plows through his obstacles; but the obstacles are imposed, and they are far from everyday hindrances. This is what makes the book (primarily) an event story, which is why it starts when his monitor is removed--the thing that throws the world awry. His character doesn't have to change in order for him to handle Stilson, or other like him, or the buggers themselves. It changes as a result of facing them, however, and the way he faces those challenges is (1) driven by his character, and (2) partly responsible for some of his future challenges. Within the confines of the situational constraints, it is his character which drives the story. Hence it is a character-driven event-type story (again, primarily). It is not (primarily--and I hope no one minds if I don't bother to repeat that word any more from here on) a Character story.

If you want to read a plot-driven Event story, read a Doc Savage book. Moving a little further toward character-driven (though not much) would be Isaac Asimov. For me, while I can enjoy a Doc Savage book (I mean, in ways beyond laughing at some of the humorous syntax) it requires a bit of an effort, the characters are so terrible. Whereas Asimov's characters, while generally pretty darn flat, are at least consistent enough that I can invest enough of myself in them to really enjoy the stories. At the other end of the spectrum are authors like Card and Robin Hobb, with Hobb a bit further along. (I'm not, by the way, claiming that Hobb's characters, or books, are better than Card's. I'm saying that Card seems to keep a tighter rein on his plot--he uses his events to obstruct his characters in more directed ways, so that they continue to face the situations he wants them to; whereas Hobb seems more likely to let the characters change the intended course of the book, hence they're a bit more character-driven. All of this is really speculation on my part.)

Well, I don't know what's with me. I seem to have been writing some unusually lengthy posts lately. Guess I'll let this one rest now.

I just looked up what Card actually said in Characters & Viewpoint:

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The character story . . . begins at the point when the main character finds his present situation intolerable and sets out to change; it ends when the character either finds a new role, willingly returns to the old one, or despairs of improving his lot.

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There are character stories where the character tries to change to a different role (OSC mentions "A Member of the Wedding" as an example of that).

There are character stories where the character likes where he or she is, but things happen to disrupt the status quo and the character is thrust into a role he or she would never have chosen (an example might be when the speaker of the house becomes president after the president and vice president are assassinated in OSC's new book, EMPIRE).

Both kinds of stories could go several ways: the character could succeed in the new role, or figure out how to do something different, or the character could fail to achieve the new role or learn that it really wasn't what the character wanted to be after all.

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Could you give an example? Tx.

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If Empire had a different focus, that might have been the case, but since it wasn't, I'd say it was more of an idea story.

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Of course, but good stories are more than one thing, and I was using a character story situation from EMPIRE as my example, not saying that EMPIRE is a character story.